“Though, you might think the crimes I’ve committed cannot be atoned for,” I said. “Someone dear to me once said ‘impossibilities are only possibilities not yet conquered by the determined’. And so I will do the same here.”
I reached my hand out, and a single drop of rain splashed in my palm. Then another, and a third after that, until a light rain was showering the room. It fell on the Chancellor’s bald head, ran down his face and through his beard. It seemed to take him a while to realize what was happening, but when finally he did, his eyes grew large with astonishment.
He hadn’t seen rain in years. No one in Sol had. The city relied on a system of small aquifers beneath the town limits for water to drink and tend their plants. A small system that was becoming smaller by the second.
He cupped the rain in his hand and brought it to his lips, sipping in ecstasy. He smiled and drank more.
“Rain,” he said. He looked excitedly over at his guards as they now struggled to their feet. “Rain!”
I nodded to Illindria. The deal’s as good as ours.
“The Sky Guardian’s control over the weather is matched only by Othum himself,” Illindria added. “He is a master of Lightning Calling, Cold Manipulation, and Rain Induction. And as I understand it, Sol is in dire need of a drink. So, Chancellor Mythborne, what do you say? Three Guardians for the price of a Throne?”
He watched his hands fill with more rain, looking more like a child than a two-hundred year-old man. He was quiet as he drew his eyes up to me, and then to Illindria.
“We’ll do it,” he said. “But under one condition. Before the deal can be officially sealed, the Guardians must show their loyalty, to wash away any fears I might have of this exchange.”
“I’m listening,” said Illindria.
“To the north of Sol stands an outpost of Illyria, constructed long ago to keep watch over us,” he explained. “Bring me the head of the General who lies within, and the worship of Sol is as good as yours.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE HAND OF THE MOON
I ran my fingers over the cold, white marble of my Throne’s arm.
It was so smooth to the touch, as though it had never been rough and unpolished, as all rocks are born. The Throne of the Moon, I thought. Once it had been the seat of Lady Vinya, and before her, Diana of the Romans. Artemis of the Greeks before that, and of course, preceded by Chang’e of the Jade people. The Throne of the Moon was one of the oldest Thrones still in existence, sat upon by at least ten gods, and created by Sin of the ancient and masterful Mesopotamian civilization. And now the responsibility of it has fallen upon me. A fourteen-year-old elf girl.
But not once since I had sat upon the Throne had I felt secure in the grand power it gave me. I was merely a pawn to channel its power, replaceable just as Vinya had been, and all the other gods and goddesses before her. Gods were only channelers of the world’s power. Beings meant to keep the domains in check.
I drew my gaze upward, past the massive columns of lenses that hovered above me and the rounded walls of turning gears that clinked and clanked as they moved. Through the hole in the roof I witnessed the stars light up the night sky, their numbers in the millions, their majesty unmistakable. They are not as replaceable as I...as Lady Helia, Illyrian of Time and Death.
The black liquid leaking from her eyes and ears and mouth drifted through my vision like a horrible, creeping nightmare.
What will come of her Throne? I wondered. What’s more, what will come of the Balance? Never before had it swayed to the Dark like it was at this moment, fueling the forces and powers that sought destruction and chaos. And with half the Guardians fighting for what Illyria would call the enemy, the restoration of the Balance was not a foreseeable objective. Though who our enemies were exactly, I was not sure. Never be sure of who your enemy is, every elf would tell you. And I kept those words dear to me now more than ever.
The night air was cool against my skin, and a chill rushed over my body. The Eternity Diamond buried in my forehead cooled drastically.
The sign I am waiting for.
I closed my eyes, and sat as upright in my Throne as I possibly could. It groaned and reclined in its place. The gears veiling the rounded walls of my temple ground against one another, its sound the only thing I could hear. The Diamond in my forehead cooled even more. When finally the cold started to burn, my eyes shot open, and a beam of blue and pink light fired out of my crystal, passing through the lenses above, each amplifying the stream. It reached into the furthest distances of the sky, onto a plane made long before this one. A wave of cold rushed through my bones—as cold as death itself—and from out of the night sky...emerged the Moon. My daughter. My mother. My aunt. It melted through the sky like a rock being pulled from a pond, and as my beam continued to pull, those voices came to me once more.
“Save me. Save us,” they groaned miserably.
It startled me to hear, but I maintained my composure as best I could. The Moon Summoning was a delicate process. I knew these voices were no fiction created by my mind now. I was an elf. Elves do not hear things that were not making sounds to be heard.
When the Moon was brought to its full, radiant self, a rumble washed over my temple, and the beam retracted back into the Diamond. As my Throne slowly returned to its normal position, and the gears came to a stop, I stood, though exhausted. My head spun and my bones and muscles felt older than time. The amount of energy required for the Summoning every month wasn’t something I had exactly gotten used to.
“Save us,” I repeated aloud, my voice carrying through the temple as the gears ceased their grinding. “Save who?”
I left the rounded hall of my temple, its twin mirrored in the tumbling waters of the small terraces that surrounded it. I started across the narrow bridge to the mainland, my mind as heavy as my bones.
Moonlight bathed my path as I watched my feet take me over the narrow bridge, and onto the turquoise-tiled streets of Illyria.
“Can’t hear,” said the voices. “Can’t feel. So dark.”
I tightened my jaw as I walked, focusing on pushing the voices from my head. Slowly but surely, they became faint, until they’d disappeared completely. This had been going on since I’d first heard them beside the dead body of Lady Helia.
In minutes, I had entered the Quartz Halls on the northeastern part of the island. I traced my eyes up the columns of pure quartz that lined the corridors. Each rose hundreds of feet to meet with the glass ceiling above, the light of the Moon igniting their faces in brilliant colors. I passed a golden door to my right, behind which sprawled the massive chambers of Lord Soldune, Illyrian of Revelry. More like debauchery. One left turn and small flight of descending stairs later, I passed the door that once kept the room of Lady Helia in secret and shadow. It had been empty ever since she was sent to the Darklands as punishment, but she did not take the emptiness of the air with her.
I reached the silver doors to my chamber with much relief. But when I pushed them open, I stopped. My ears had perked up. The Quartz Halls were not as quiet as I thought they would be tonight.
Whispers. I could hear them many halls away, light but still there.
I stood as still as possible and calmed the beating of my heart until it seemed I had no heart at all. I needed complete quiet to hear what secretive words needed to be whispered. I focused, and the voices became clear.
“It’s back,” said the troubled voice of a young man I knew to be Vasheer. “It’s back and we’re doomed!”
“Stop it!” snapped his mother, the Queen. “Just stop it, Vasheer! You sound like a child, worrying nonsensically like this.”
I heard his throat slowly close around a worried swallow. “But you know it to be true!” he replied. “It’s returned and—”
“I said enough, Vasheer!” she snapped once more. I heard the tussling of hair, once, twice, as she undoubtedly turned to see if anyone was watching them. “That can’t be it,” she went on, quiet this time. “If it were, we
’d all be dead by now.”
“What else could explain her death?” he said.
“The Sickness has long been gone,” said Onyxia.
My heart leapt in my chest. The Sickness! How could the idea not have already come to me?
“Whatever this is,” the Queen continued, “I want you in your room at all times, you understand? I will not have the one good son I have fall to whatever this might be: be it Sickness or assassin.”
“But Mother—”
“What have I said about using that word with me?” she hissed. “Do as I command, Lord Vasheer, or a Lord you’ll no longer be.”
I heard her hair flip angrily once more, and the patter of her determined footsteps. Vasheer’s door closed, and I too entered my room, eyes unblinking.
I leaned on my doors and let my mind reel. The Sickness...could it have been possible that Lady Helia had contracted it? But it was supposed to be a disease. If she had gotten it, why were Othum and Onyxia spared and everyone else who had touched her? But perhaps it did not work like ordinary diseases. Perhaps it was contracted in less contagious ways?
Or...could it really be an assassin?
CHAPTER NINE
THE THUNDER LORD
I gripped the railings of the lift as it ascended, speeding upward through the Serpent’s Spine.
Illindria and the Twins on were either side of me. In front of us stood the mighty Chancellor and his two guards, their spears in hand. Each floor we passed was completely open to the lift, and each was alight with blazing torches that made the guards’ white armor flash brilliantly with each pass.
The lift slowed, and just as the outside light broke upon us, the platform stopped at the uppermost level of the tower. Suddenly, all of Sol was mine to behold—from its terraces, farms, and circular walls, to the desert and its treacherous heat and hills waiting hungrily beyond that. It was a beautiful view, but it was the glimmer of iron to my right that quickly caught my eye.
We stepped off the platform in the middle of the floor, and together, we gazed upon the massive twenty-foot-tall snake’s head rearing upward off the side of the tower. Within its opened mouth, past its sharpened fangs and forked tongue, hovered the Scepter of First Light. It was a large torch made of silver, engraved with images of many beings with their hands all linked. Above it glowed the mighty blue light I’d first seen in approaching Sol. It painted everyone’s faces in eerie silvers and blues as if we were standing beneath the waves of a shallow sea. But it wasn’t warm. In fact, its radiation was as cold as a winter’s gale.
“The Scepter of First Light,” Illindria whispered in awe, walking toward it with wide eyes.
“It’s beautiful,” said K’thas, approaching the Scepter as well.
But they seemed to take a step too close, however, and the guards hurriedly crossed their spears in front of them. Illindria withdrew, and placed her hand over the jade jewels of her necklaces. K’thas, however, grunted angrily.
“Get not an inch closer,” said the Chancellor from behind us.
Illindria scoffed at the guards, but composed herself and turned back to the Chancellor. “Apologies. It has been many years since I’ve gazed upon the Scepter. It calls to us gods, you see; it being lit by one of the last drops of Netherblood and all.”
“I’m aware,” grumbled the Chancellor. “Many attacks our city has faced because of this call you speak of.”
“Of course, the lifeline it’s provided you for so long has certainly made the gods even more envious,” said Illindria. “You’ve put it to such good use, Chancellor. Even the gods of Illyria admit it.”
He nodded. “I have. For more than two hundred years, it has fueled an entire city’s existence. Providing light for our crops, powering our great and powerful shield, bestowing our weapons with mighty gifts.”
“And how happy we’d be to see the Scepter provide two hundred more years of these grand gifts,” said Illindria, her smile a sweet one.
Surely he can see the deception, I thought. Surely he is not as gullible as Illindria would have me think. But quickly I remembered what she’d taught me in my Dark training. A desperate man is a blind man.
“We shall see about that, Illindria,” he returned. He pointed to the west and my eyes followed his finger, past the Scepter and toward the red rolling hills of the desert in the east. “There, past the crest of the highest hill, awaits the Dome. It was constructed long ago by the Illyrians to spy on our city from afar, and it frequently acts as a station to house troops before Illyria leads an assault. Our scouts have recently spotted a number of small legions entering the base, so we have reason to believe the gods are preparing for yet another one of these assaults. Although we have our own soldiers to attack, the Dome has defenses we simply cannot breach.”
“And you want them to destroy it?” K’thas asked, his massive, rotted arms crossed as he stared at the gleaming base.
“At this time, the Dome houses nearly four hundred mechanical soldiers built by Esereez the Inventor. Only one living being lives behind the protective walls of the Dome. His name is General S’vane...and I want him dead.”
“General S’vane?” said Illindria, her uncertain tone unmistakable. “But there’s a reason why he’s a General, my dear Chancellor.”
“Too big a job for your mighty Guardians, then?” he asked.
She clenched her jaw, but Solara was quick to speak for her. “Sounds easy enough. How would you prefer him? After all, there are so many ways to kill a man.”
“Any way will do,” said the Chancellor. “But you will not be the one to kill him, my dear Light Bringer.” He turned to me. “You, Thunder Lord, will be the one to do the deed.”
“M-me?” I stuttered, regretting it immediately. To stutter is to be weak, Illindria would’ve said.
“Yes. You. As a step toward reconciling your wrongs against the human race.”
I chewed on my lip as my metal jaw grew heavy upon my face. I’d never killed a person before. Was I even capable of doing such a thing? Even for the cause of tearing down Illyria. I dared not look in Illindria’s direction for support. I couldn’t look to her as a child would his mother. Another sign of weakness.
I looked out at the Dome, and then back into the Chancellor’s cold eyes. And once again, Thornikus and his big eyes and even bigger ears stepped out from behind the Chancellor’s skirts.
He nodded at me, and in turn, I bowed to the Chancellor.
“I’ll do it,” I said, eyes to the floor. “As your Thunder Lord, I will bring to you the body of General S’vane.”
The Chancellor raised his chin, looking down upon me as a king would his subdued constituent.
“Then let the Dome fall,” he said.
Solara and Spike took to my side, and together we turned to the gleaming Dome on the highest hill.
Solara wore a wicked smile, as with one turn in her place, her body exploded into a storm of a million hissing, screaming locusts. They flew in every direction, their beating wings so loud they surely could be heard fluttering for miles in each direction. In one swoop, the locusts all coalesced into a stream and shot for the Dome. Meanwhile, Spike stomped his foot to the floor and the stone beneath him uprooted itself, levitating in the air.
The Chancellor gasped, looking appalled at Spike’s use of the tower’s surface.
“What?” Spike shrugged. “I’ll bring it back.”
He leaned to the right ever so slightly and the chunk of rock beneath his feet surged in the same direction, closing in on Solara’s traveling locust swarm.
With only a thought, I pulled the winds down to me, whipping through my tunic and hair. They coiled around my waist, drawing tighter and tighter around me like a belt, until I outstretched my arms and they hoisted me into the air.
In no time, I’d gained on Spike and Solara, and with the wind lashing through my long hair, we charged toward the Dome. Its golden walls glinted under what light the gray clouds above would allow—a sparkle of gold in the bloody sand of t
he High Heat.
But as we grew closer, the sparkle became a dome of woven gold that sprouted from its thirty foot-tall walls to meet in the center. Watchtowers studded the walls just like those in Sol, with electrical cannons stationed at the top of each spire and two mighty ones rising beside the massive golden main gates. Soldiers made of metal bars and cogs patrolled the tops of the walls, light glinting off the diamond shields fixed to their arms and the diamond swords occupying their hands.
With only fifty or so yards left to travel, Spike sped forward, leapt off his rock and rocketed toward the sand below. He dove into the ground as though it was water, disappearing beneath the sand, a ripple in the earth the only evidence of his entry.
The soldiers stopped in their place, but before they could do a single thing, the sand swelled in front of them. It rose as a mighty hill, until two red eyes and a gaping mouth wider than the front gates emerged through its surface that emitted a ground-shaking roar and two massive arms swept out of its sides to crash upon the earth. It threw its mouth open and out poured a river of steaming, black tar. It washed over the charging guards, boiling them upon contact.
Solara’s head and torso melted through the front of her locusts. “I’ll take the soldiers!” she shouted to me. “You focus on the General!”
I nodded to her and watched as Solara’s insects descended as a roaring whirlwind. Her head and torso melted out of the front of the twister as she shot toward the guards atop the Dome’s walls. The skin of her arms shifted into glistening black armor, her hands morphing into sickles like that of a praying mantis. She sliced through the metal guards atop the walls, one by one, her sickles cutting through their metal bodies like air before she tossed them off the side.